Pakistan has been coping with a series of
tragedies and these include the ill-fated plane crash near Islamabad
on Friday (April 20) where more than 100 people are reported to have
been killed, which was preceded by the massive avalanche in the Gayari
army base in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (April 7) which buried as many
as 140 troops and civilian personnel. It is appropriate that Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has conveyed India’s condolences and reached
out to the people of Pakistan as they cope with these challenges.

Pakistan Army Chief General Pervez Kayani visited the avalanche
affected area on Wednesday (April 18) and made some observations to the
media – including foreign correspondents – that have aroused
considerable comment and interest in both India and Pakistan.

The content of the remarks against the backdrop of the loss of
Pakistani lives from amongst personnel posted in the inhospitable
Sicahen glacier area could be described as unexceptionable and there
could be little major disagreement. General Kayani called for the
peaceful resolution of the glacier dispute and proposed that Pakistan
should spend less on defence and more on the development effort for the
people. He further added: “Peaceful coexistence between the two
neighbours is very important so that everybody can concentrate on the
well-being of the people.”

The reason for this heightened interest in the Kayani remarks stems
from the fact that till recently the general personally – and the
institution he commands – the Pakistani Army were seen to be inflexibly
opposed to the idea of "peaceful co-existence" with India, or for that
matter the proposition that Pakistan ought to spend less of its
resources on the military and more on the humans security indicators.

And in keeping with the basic template evolved since the 1972 Simla
Accord between the two neighbours, Gen Kayani suggested that the
decades of enmity between India and Pakistan should be resolved through
dialogue and negotiations. He further dwelt on the urgency of
halting the damage to the environment caused by troop deployment on the
Siachen Glacier by both the countries and noted: “Ultimately it’s going
to affect the River Indus adversely and we understand water is important
and water management is very important.”

At a time when the vitality of the seasonal monsoon is examined in
minute detail by the entire South Asian community for its very
existence, the reference to the criticality of water is significant and
to be welcomed. The Siachen dispute between India and Pakistan dates
back to April 1984 and over the last 28 years there has been
considerable environmental degradation and damage and a rigorous
assessment is yet to be done given the nature of the location and its
very restricted access – on both sides.

But the question that is being asked on both sides is what is the
sincerity index of the Kayani statement calling for peaceful
co-existence between the two South Asian neighbours? It may be recalled
that, despite domestic reservations, it was this vision that
encouraged then prime minister Indira Gandhi to sign the Simla Accord
on terms that were very favorable to a militarily defeated Pakistan.
While India did not seek to fulfill its legitimate war termination
objectives, or seek reparation - it magnanimously returned all the
territory captured and the 93,000 prisoners of war – the prevailing
sentiment at the time being that India had only one objective –
"peaceful coexistence".

This objective has remained elusive for almost 40 years and in the
interim India has been dealing with a steady pattern of terror and
low intensity conflict which has its linkages with Rawalpindi – the HQ
of the Pakistan military and its intelligence agencies. Over the last
two decades, India and Pakistan went overtly nuclear in 1998 – fought
the Kargil War in 1999 – met briefly in Agra to little avail - only to
have the terror pattern against India unfolding first in December 2001
and then peaking in November 2008.

Peaceful coexistence and a negotiated settlement to all the outstanding
problems will be possible only if the Pakistani Army accepts that
support to terror is no longer an option and that borders – however
unresolved and contested – cannot be altered by force, direct or
covert. To a large extent this was the spirit and letter of the
January 2004 agreement between then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
and President Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, it appeared, had supported
the Musharraf (who was also the army general) initiative to make peace
with India.

However this was misleading. For a couple of years after the
rapprochement and back-room negotiations over the contentious Indo-Pak
issues including Kashmir , the rug was pulled from under Musharraf and
he soon lost power. While his imprudent handling of the judiciary and
the political bargains struck with the right-wing groups contributed to
the Musharraf ouster, it is also suggested that some elements within
the 'deep state’ of Pakistan were not enthused by this peace approach
with India – and hence Pervez Musharraf had to be ejected.

Today the peace suggestion by the other Pervez – General Kayani is to be
cautiously welcomed but a ‘core’ issue remains. Is the Pakistan GHQ
in Rawalpindi still wedded to the distorted idea that it can support
groups like the Haqqani in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e-Taiaba
against India, even while seeking international support for dealing
with the Taliban within Pakistan? Hence is this olive branch a tactical
move - to allow the Pakistan Army to deal with its volatile western
front and the internal security situation ?

Sophistry over the Mumbai 2008 trial and seeking to rationalize the
hate-speeches of ideologues like Hafiz Saeed is a case of reverting to
the hunt-with-the-hound and run-with-the-hare syndrome which cost
Musharraf his job – and on occasion attempts were made in Pakistan on
his life.

Has the collective anti-India constituency in Pakistan undergone an
irrevocable change of attitude? While it is too early to come to a
definitive conclusion, there are some deeply embedded lessons here for
General Pervez Kayani as he moots peaceful coexistence with India.

(C Uday Bhaskar is a leading Indian strategic analyst. He can be contacted at cudayb@gmail.com. This article was first appeared on South Asia Monitor on April 22.)